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PE 426

PIPELINE
ENGINEERING

Introduction
Humankind needs to move fluids from place
to place.
Some fluids have to be moved in huge
quantities and over long distances: examples
water, oil, natural gas, and carbon dioxide.
Other fluids have to be moved in smaller
quantities or over shorter distances:
examples steam, ethylene, blood, milk, wine,
helium, mercury, nitroglycerin, and
petrochemicals.

There are essentially three ways of


moving fluids.
The first is to pour the fluid into a
tank, move the filled tank to where
the fluid is needed, and empty the
tank.
The basic components of that method
are a tank that can be moved and a
way of filling and emptying it.

The second way is to construct a


pipe from where the fluid is to where
the fluid needs to be, then pump the
fluid along the pipe.

The third way, sometimes used in


combination with the other two, is to
transform the fluid into a solid or
another fluid that can be transported
more easily.

The tank option is flexible and often


has lower capital costs but higher
operating costs.
That option is used for small volumes
of high-value fluids such as mercury,
wine, blood, and helium.
The tank protects the fluid against
contamination from outside.
The risk that the transported fluid
might escape and damage the
environment depends on the
integrity of the tank.

The tank method is used widely to


transport oil and liquefied natural gas
(an example of the transformation
option) by sea because of the
flexibility it allows.
For example the same VLCC (very
large crude carrier) can transport oil
from the Middle East to Japan on one
voyage and oil from Alaska to
California on the next voyage.

During the voyages, the cargo can be


sold and resold, diverted to a
different destination, and partly
offloaded at yet another location.
Oil in tank cars is carried over long
distances by rail where no pipelines
exist.
The pipeline option is relatively
inflexible by comparison.

The term pipe is defined herein as a


closed conduit, usually of circular
cross section.
It can be made of any appropriate
material such as steel or plastic.
The term pipeline refers to a long
line of connected segments of pipe,
with pumps, valves, control devices,
and other equipment/facilities
needed for operating the system.

The term pipe is defined herein as a


closed conduit, usually of circular
cross section.
It can be made of any appropriate
material such as steel or plastic.
The term pipeline refers to a long
line of connected segments of pipe,
with pumps, valves, control devices,
and other equipment/facilities
needed for operating the system.

A pipeline is a fixed asset with large


capital costs.
Once the pipeline is in place, though,
the operation and maintenance costs
are relatively small, and the pipeline
has an operating life of 40 years or
more.

A land pipeline may be vulnerable to


damage by war or terrorist attack or to
interruption of service by political
interference from one of the countries
it crosses.
It is this factor that has limited the
application of pipelines to carry oil from
the Middle East to Europe and, so far,
has prevented the construction of a gas
pipeline from Nigeria to Europe (though
that option has recently received new
interest).

Pipeline transportation consumes


little energy; in fact, it consumes
significantly less energy compared to
liquefaction, transport as LNG
(liquified natural gas), and
regasification.

IMPORTANCE OF PIPELINES
Pipelines are the least understood
and least appreciated mode of
transport.
Pipelines are poorly understood by
the general public because they are
most often underground and invisible
out of sight, out of mind!
Despite the low degree of recognition
by the public, pipelines are vitally
important to the economic wellbeing
and security of most nations.

All modern nations rely almost exclusively on


pipelines to transport the following
commodities:
1. Water from treatment plants to individual
homes and other buildings
2. Sewage from homes to treatment plants
3. Natural gas all the way from wells to the
consumers who may be located more than a
thousand miles awaybe it a home, a
factory, a school, or a power plant
4. Crude oil from oil fields to refineries
5. Refined petroleum products (gasoline, diesel,
jet fuel, heating oil, etc.) from refineries to
various cities over hundreds of miles

All modern nations rely almost exclusively on


pipelines to transport the following
commodities:
1. Water from treatment plants to individual
homes and other buildings
2. Sewage from homes to treatment plants
3. Natural gas all the way from wells to the
consumers who may be located more than a
thousand miles awaybe it a home, a
factory, a school, or a power plant
4. Crude oil from oil fields to refineries
5. Refined petroleum products (gasoline, diesel,
jet fuel, heating oil, etc.) from refineries to
various cities over hundreds of miles

We will study pipelines under water, which


are used in various contexts.
More and more oil and gas are being
produced from fields that lie under the
sea.
The product has to be carried to shore,
and that is usually done by pipeline.
Intrafield pipelines carry oil and gas from
wellheads and manifolds to platforms and
from one manifold to another.

Sometimes gas from one field is


transported to another field to be
injected to maintain reservoir
pressure.
Treated seawater is injected to
displace the oil.
Many pipelines that are primarily on
land also have to cross seas, straits
between islands, and river estuaries.

The course will relate to areas of


knowledge that broadly match
groups of decisions that a pipeline
engineer has to make.
The following will be the important
task of the pipeline system designer:

The first task of the pipeline system


designer is to choose the pipeline
route.
Sometimes this task is straightforward: If
the seabed is smooth and featureless, a
straight line between the end points is the
shortest and most economical route.
More often, there are various obstructions
and interferences that compel the
designer to select a more complex route.
The factors involved may be physical,
environmental, political, or related to
other human uses of the seabed.

The designer then has to consider


materials.
Many pipelines are made from low-alloy carbon
steel, which is a robust and inexpensive
material.
The designer then has to consider a corrosionresistant alloy, a flexible, or a composite.
Detailed decisions about the composition and
specification of the material involve many
interacting factors of corrosion resistance,
weldability, strength, fracture toughness, and
cost.
The pipes have to be joined together, and
careful decisions have to be made if the pipes
are to be welded.

The next task is to decide on the


diameter of the pipeline.
If the diameter is too small, the
pressure drop between the ends will
be excessively large; but if the
diameter is too large, the cost will be
unnecessarily great.
Undesirable flow modes may occur in
two-phase flow, also.

The next choice is the wall thickness


of the pipeline.
This is primarily an issue of structural
engineering in which the designer has to
ensure that the pipe is strong enough to
resist many kinds of loading,.
in which among them there are
internal pressure,
external pressure,
bending and fatigue during
construction, concentrated loads, and
impact.

Almost all underwater pipelines have


an external coating to protect them
against corrosion.
complemented by a cathodic protection
system that prevents external corrosion
if the coating is damaged.
Many pipelines have an additional
concrete weight coating to provide
stability against waves and currents
and to give the anticorrosion coating
protection against mechanical damage.

A pipeline must be constructable.


The designer needs to know the
limitations of the available construction
systems and has to design the pipeline
so that it can be built safely and
economically.
Many pipelines are trenched or buried to
provide shelter against hydrodynamic
forces, protect them against mechanical
damage, or provide thermal insulation
and resistance to upheaval buckling.

Pipelines do not always rest continuously


in contact with the seabed, and there
may be spans in which the pipeline
bridges across low points in the profile.
Spans can give rise to various structural
problems and may need to be corrected.
Uneven seabed profiles can also initiate
upheaval buckling, in which the pipeline
arches above the bottom.
That situation also has to be guarded
against and, if necessary, corrected.
Pipelines can also buckle sideways.

Pipelines in service may be subject to


damage by chemical and microbiological
corrosion.
The designer needs to know how to
suppress corrosion as far as possible and
how to allow for it in the choice of wall
thickness.
The operator needs to know what
operating practices are likely to minimize
corrosion and how to monitor the
pipeline for evidence of corrosion.

A pipeline is at risk of damage, and


repairs may become necessary.
Risk, Accidents, and Repair, examines
the general principles that apply to repair
and presents case studies of incidents
that have required intervention and the
repair techniques used in each instance.
Ultimately, a pipeline has to be
decommissioned when its operating life
has ended or when it is no longer needed.

Decommissioning is an evolving subject, but


it is a growing concern to operators,
regulatory authorities, and the wider
community.
It engages various factors, among them
national and international law,
environmental protection, the safety of other
seabed users, and engineering.
Finally, neither design nor construction is a
mature or dead technology.
New ideas are coming forward all the time.

ADVANTAGES OF PIPELINES
Economical in many circumstances. Factors
that favor pipelines include large throughput,
rugged terrain and hostile environment (such
as transportation through swamps).
Under ordinary conditions, pipelines can
transport fluids (liquids or gases) at a fraction
of the cost of transportation by truck or train
(fig 1).
Solid transport by pipeline is far more complex
and costly than fluid transport.
Still, in many cases, pipelines are used to
transport solids because the cost is lower than
for other modes of transportation, such as
trucks.

Comparison of petroleum transportation cost by


pipeline with those by other modes. (From Kennedy,
J.L., Oil and Gas Pipeline Fundamentals, PennWell
Publishing, Tulsa, OK, 1984, p. 2. With permission
from PennWell Publishing.)

ADVANTAGES OF PIPELINES
Low energy consumption.
The energy intensiveness of large
pipelines is much lower than that of
trucks, and is even lower than that of
rail.
The energy intensiveness is defined
as the energy consumed in
transporting unit weight of cargo
over unit distance, in units such as
Btu per ton mile.

Friendly to environment.
This is due mainly to the fact that most
pipelines are underground.
They do not pose most of the
environmental problems associated with
trucks and trains, such as air pollution,
noise, traffic jams on highways and at rail
crossings, and killing animals that strayed
on highways and railroads.
Oil pipelines may pollute land and rivers
when a leak or rupture develops.
However, far more spills would occur if
trucks and trains transported the same oil.

Safe for humans.


This is especially true for liquid pipelines
and liquid-solid pipelines.
The safety of natural gas pipelines is
always of strong concern.
Gas pipelines under high pressure can
explode; however, if trucks and trains
transported the same natural gas, it
would be much more dangerous to the
public.
So, in general, it can be said that
pipelines are much safer than all other
land-based modes of freight transport.

Unaffected by weather.
Weather does not affect pipelines
because most of them are buried
underground below the frostline.

High degree of automation.


This makes pipelines the least laborintensive of all transportation modes.
Note that labor-intensive societies
generally have low living standards.
The high living standard in the U.S.
would not be possible without
automation.

High reliability.
Because pipeline operation is
continuous, automatic, and
unaffected by weather, pipelines are
highly reliable.
Furthermore, they are least affected
by labor strikes, holidays, delivery
schedules, etc.
The system operates continuously
around the clock without stop.

Less sensitive to inflation.


Due to high capital cost and low
operational cost, pipeline tariffs are
less sensitive to inflation than tariffs
for trucks and trains.
However, high capital cost is great
when the interest rate is high.

Convenience.
Water and gas pipelines transport
commodities directly to homes, a great
convenience to the public.
Oil pipelines bring crude oil to refineries
and bring refined petroleum products,
such as gasoline and diesel fuel, to the
market without the products leaving the
pipelines.
Even when one puts gasoline in a car at
a filling station, the gasoline moves
through a short pipe (hose) fitted with a
nozzle.

Less susceptible to theft.


Because pipelines are mostly
underground and enclosed, the
commodities transported by
pipelines are less susceptible to theft
than those transported by truck and
train.

Efficient land use.


Underground pipelines allow surface
land to be used for other purposes.
This results in more efficient land
use.

High degree of security.


Because pipelines are underground
and fixed to the ground, terrorists
cannot hijack a pipeline, as they can
trucks and aircraft, and use it as a
lethal weapon to destroy a major
building or other important target.
Also, it is far more difficult for terrorists
to attack an underground pipeline and
inflict catastrophic damage to it than
to an aboveground structure such as a
bridge or a power plant.

ROUTE SELECTION

Route selection is a critical activity.


A poorly chosen route can be much more
expensive than a well-chosen route.
It can lead to costly surprises and delays
at later stages, particularly if unexpected
geotechnical or marine conditions are
encountered, or if the route leads to
conflicts with public authorities,
environmental interests, or other
operators.

It is not an exaggeration to say that a


few days (and a few thousand
dollars) spent on sensitive and
thoughtful evaluation of the pipeline
route can save months and millions
later.
Even in developed areas, a surprising
number of factors have to be taken
into account, among them:

Politics
Environment
Approaches to existing platforms and
risers
Avoidance of zones exposed to anchor
damage
Avoidance of zones exposed to
dropped-object damage
Crossings of existing pipelines
Cables
Areas of very hard seabed
Areas of very soft seabed etc

A rational choice of route cannot be


made without information about the
seabed topography and geotechnics.
It is never sensible to embark on a
marine survey without carrying out a
desk study first.

Much information can be gathered from


charts,
geological maps,
fishing charts,
aerial photography,
atellite photography and
synthetic-aperture radar,
other operators, navigation authorities
and navies, local inquiry, and
sometimes from more obscure
sources.

Landfalls are particularly


complicated.
Many of the famous disasters of
pipeline construction have been in
very shallow water in shore
approaches.
A bad choice of landfall location can
be very expensive indeed, and can
lead to devastating cost overruns and
interminable legal disputes.

The designer needs to have an


understanding of the geomorphologic
factors that determine the form of
the coast and perceive the way that
the construction of a pipeline will
interact with environmental factors
such as wave refraction, longshore
sediment transport, wave breaking,
and seabed geology..

In this part we will discuss


Section 1: physical factors such as
seabed geotechnics.
Section 2: explores route selection
implications prompted by interaction
with other users of the seabed.
Section 3: is concerned with political
and environmental factors,

Physical Factors
A pipeline rests on or in the seabed.
From the pipeline point of view, the
ideal seabed is level, smooth, and
composed of stable medium clay.
The pipe settles into the clay and
gains enhanced lateral stability.

If the seabed is not smooth but


uneven and rocky, there will be many
free spans where the pipeline bridges
above holes and valleys, some of
them long enough to need
correction.
At high points, the concentrated
forces between the bed and the pipe
may damage the external coating.

Hard seabed is difficult and


expensive to trench.
If the seabed is very soft, however, a
pipeline will sink into it and may be
difficult to reach for inspection and
for operations such as tie-ins to other
pipelines or possible repairs.

Some seabeds are highly mobile and


include sandwaves (which may be 15 m
high and 100 m long) and smaller
ripple features (which range in size on
many scales from millimeters to meters
high).
These features move significantly
during the life of a pipeline, so that a
pipeline supported on the crest of a
sandwave when it was constructed may
later be left unsupported when the
wave has moved on.

The movements are irregular and


difficult to predict confidently.
For these reasons, it is better to
avoid sandwave fields whenever
possible.
The route of the first Forties Pipeline
in the North Sea, for example, was
shifted southward to avoid a
sandwave field.

Sometimes, it is impossible to avoid


sandwaves and megaripples, and
then a trench is dredged to a level at
or below the troughs of the
sandwaves before the pipe is laid
along the trench.
This technique is called
presweeping.

It has been used for several pipelines


in the southern North Sea, where a
combination of shallow water, high
tidal currents, high waves induced by
northeasterly gales, and mobile loose
sand creates a complicated and
changing seabed topography.

Interactions with Other Users of


the Seabed
A remarkably large number of other
human activities engage with the
seabed, and the choice of route must
take into account potential
interference with them.
Oil and gas exploration and
production are the most obvious
conflicting activities.

It is prudent to keep pipelines away from


platforms, unless of course they have to
be connected to the platforms, because
of the possibility of damage by dropped
objects;
an increased risk of anchor damage from
supply vessels and construction vessels;
and
the possibility that fire, explosion, or
structural failure on the platform might
involve the pipeline.

For the same reasons, it is a good


idea to keep away from existing
wellheads and manifolds and wise to
find out where future subsea
activities might occur.
Existing pipelines are the most
common problem for designers.
One pipeline can cross another one,
but it is not practicable simply to lay
the second pipeline across the first.

A crossing has to be carefully


designed so that neither pipeline
damages the other.
there is no undesirable interference
between the two cathodic protection
systems, and neither is overstressed
nor destabilized by hydrodynamic
forces.

One simple option is to trench the


first pipeline more deeply at the
crossing point, lay mattresses over
the first line to provide physical
separation to prevent coating
damage and separate the cathodic
protection systems, and then
carefully lay the second line over the
crossing point.

Sometimes much more elaborate


designs are required, particularly if
the first line cannot be lowered
because the seabed is too hard to
trench, requiring the second line to
cross by a bridgelike structure made
of mattresses, concrete units, or rock
dump.
The number of crossings should be
kept to a minimum, and the
crossings should be at right angles.

A decision to cross another


operators pipeline necessarily
implies time-consuming discussions
with the operator and the regulators
about the design of the construction
and the measures that need to be
taken during construction.

Vulnerable submarine cables


crisscross many areas of the sea
floor.
The usual way of crossing a cable
with a pipeline is to sever the cable
first, lay the pipeline through the gap,
and then splice the cable and lower it
back over the pipeline.
This is an expensive operation and
should be avoided if possible.

Fishing for demersal fish that live at the


bottom is an important activity in many
shallow seas such as the North Sea.
The heightened level of exploitation of
fishery resources leads fishermen into new
geographical areas and deeper water and
often the use of larger and heavier bottom
gear.
Though fish are attracted to pipelines, a
politically influential fishing industry
perceives the invasion of fishing grounds by
pipelines as another threat to its livelihood
and may wish to see a pipeline route
changed to skirt the best fishing grounds.

Military activities use the seabed in


various ways.
Mines are laid in wars and are not
recovered or deactivated afterward.
The explosives and detonators
remain sensitive, and the mines may
drift about and lodge against
pipelines.

The seabed is also a potential source


of minerals.
The most important seabed mining
activity is dredging for sand and
gravel.
This activity is becoming more
significant as land sites become
harder to find, because of intensive
land use and environmental
restrictions.

Environmental and Political Factors


The best solution is to adopt a strategy
that is aware of the possibility of
environmental impact from the very
beginning and to consult widely with
interested organizations and individuals.
In deep water, environmental concerns
have generally been absent.
This may be in the process of change,
particularly in parts of the world where
the environmental movement is strong
and active.

Concern has been expressed about


construction noise,
disturbance to marine mammals,
damage to coral and tubeworm
colonies,
damage to benthic life in the seabed
(though that damage is minimal by
comparison with trawling damage), and
disturbance of heavy metals such as
cadmium and mercury previously
deposited in sediments by human
activities.

In shallow water and at landfalls, on


the other hand, there are almost
invariably concerns about
environmental factors.
Shallow water is biologically
productive, and its immensely
complex food web engages bacteria,
plankton, plants, invertebrates, fish,
birds, and marine mammals so that
damage to one component may have
farreaching consequences.

The response is to study and quantify


the effects, and to look for route
alternatives and mitigation measures
that eliminate or minimize them.
Much can be done by scheduling the
construction period at an appropriate
season.

Environmental and political issues often


become mixed, but there are political
issues that have nothing to do with the
environment.
It is usually a good idea to try to
minimize the number of different
regulatory and political organizations
that have to be dealt with and avoid
unnecessary incursions across national
or state boundaries, or into offshore
leases that will necessitate negotiations
with other operators.

Environmental and political issues often


become mixed, but there are political
issues that have nothing to do with the
environment.
It is usually a good idea to try to
minimize the number of different
regulatory and political organizations
that have to be dealt with and avoid
unnecessary incursions across national
or state boundaries, or into offshore
leases that will necessitate negotiations
with other operators.

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